I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, but that is a communication issue and a sign the "rewards system" is out of whack, not a "reason" not to push for regular maintenance/tech debt/bug cleanup work.

It should be understood that there WILL be bugs, that is NOT a sign of incompetence, and so cleaning them up should be an ongoing task so they do not linger and collect (and potentially get worse by compounding with other bugs).